I myself don't really have any serious intentions of ever publishing my own game, but every once in awhile I get a cool idea for a game mechanics or theme and brainstorm ideas, like how the game would play, what the components would be like, etc.

Does anyone here do any game designing of their own? What kinds of ideas have you come up with that you think would be fun? Has anybody come up with any games using simple components like dice and standard playing cards that would be easy for myself or others to play-test?

I've dabbled in a lot of ideas, ranging from your basic colored tile placement game, to lumberjacks getting into bar fights (a smaller part of a worker placement/ bidding game), to the extinction of the dinosaurs (press your luck dice game with some player interactivity) and lots of things in between. It's a lot of fun to imagine what the game would look like as a finished product, but I find coming up with rules down rules and prototyping to be much more enjoyable.

If you have an idea for a cool game mechanic, try and fill it out! Give it a shot using some basic parts you've picked out of other game boxes (and probably a lot of notecards), and at least see if it works. It can be pretty satisfying to see your idea working, even if you don't go any further with it than that.

Be sure to check out /r/tabletopgamedesign. They're more centered around the design part (obviously), but I would say constructive conversation is welcome here, too.

I had a wave of inspiration one weekend and went to town on a game. Designed and printed cards, a map, wrote basic rules, and bam. Had a game in about 48 hours. We've played it a few times, and I've changed it a bit every time. I have a list of changes I want to make, but I haven't done them yet for various reasons. So, we haven't done anymore play testing for a few months. I need to sit down and make the changes because I think I have a pretty good concept and would like to try Nd get it produced either the old fashioned way or doing it myself.

I often daydream about stuff and board game design is no exception. My idea is a semi-cooperative game for N players where only 0 to N-1 players can win. Thematically, the player would be people stranded on a desert island and they're trying to work together to build a raft to escape. They can be selfless and work hard on the raft, and the better they build the raft the more winners there will be, or they can be selfish and horde resources, increasing their odds of actually being the person who gets a spot on the raft.

I've been working pretty seriously on a game for the last ~10 months ( ugh, it can take a while! ). I plan on putting it on kickstarter, but I've got to test it lots more to make sure it's nice and refined.

Here are some helpful tips I can think of:
- Test your game a lot!

If people don't "get" some part of your game, usually you'll want to remove it. Simpler is always better.

Make sure you can churn out prototypes really fast. It'll make it easier to go through more versions of your game. Laying stuff out in power point and printing the game out on card stock has worked really well for me.

It usually only takes one or two tests for problems in your game to surface. If something seems bad, change it before you test is again or on other people.

Play testers love being listened to! People will often suggest things to add to your game, which usually isn't the best idea. But they are probably suggesting a patch for some problem they felt experience, which is totally valid. Be a good listener and you and your testers will be happy.

When I get into something I almost always start brainstorming my own ideas for said thing. With boardgames it's actually pretty feasible, so I'm gung-ho about the whole thing. I've got a little posse of game designers too, and that makes everything much more fun!

I still haven't actually published a game, so I'm not sure how valid my opinion is :)

Interesting....I've been working on a game now for about 6 months. It's been through one minor revision, and I'm now working on a major revision that actually makes it much more fun.

I have lots of lessons left to learn, but this is what I've learned so far:

Write down everything. You will quickly find issues and holes in your original ideas and mechanics, and helps organize thoughts, rules, and details.

Keep the game simple, to start with. Start with the core, and only add complexity once you know the core works. If you try to pile all of your complexity and depth at once, balancing it will be impossible.

Playtest early with other people - make sure individual mechanics work. My first playtest with a friend exposed how slowly my game started. I didn't realize until my second playtest with another person how much of a Runaway Leader problem I had.

You must balance being flexible and being firm. Too firm, and you won't dump bad design. Too flexible, and you lose your theme.

You will get frustrated. I was ready to dump the whole project, and it wasn't until playtesting with another friend and listening to his feedback that I got excited again.

So my game works with cards and dice, and has a space battle theme. I found that the best way to handle the cards was to print on normal paper and then use the cheap card sleeves to protect - this way, I can shuffle, replace, and adjust cards easily and cheaply.

I also have another idea - it's in its infancy, but I already have a notebook started for it.

I have a couple themes in mind for each, but honestly, that's lowest on my list of priorities at the moment.

I've found it to be a good challenge just to try and come up with some mechanics that fit well together. Primarily, I have an idea for something I want to do that involves a square root function to where you have resources, but those resources are occasionally reduced. And some types of resources would disappear faster than others.

For the sake of simplicity, let's say you have a 128 things.
3 rounds later, you have 64. 3 rounds later, you have 32, then 16, 8, 4, 2, 1

I'm trying to think of a good way to do that for a number of resources that would have half-lives at different rates - and make it very simple for the players.

Then I want this to be mixed in with an area that you place cards and they are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Which corresponds with dice that are rolled (for everyone). The cards help manipulate and funnel the dice results. (So if you want to roll a 4, you can have a card that would turn 3s into 4s. So you'd be able to "activate" or place resources on "4" more often) Adjacency would matter for card placement.

The other game involves reverse deduction, but some players would try and manipulate that.

Given that my day job is in the education sector, I sometimes doodle down game ideas that are probably geared more towards having an educational value than they are towards having fun. Maybe as I play more games I'll get a better idea of how things work and flesh something out.

I really want to update a game that I love, make it a little more modern. I just haven't sat down to do it, though I'd had a bunch of conversations with people about it. I really should, too - it will never see the light of day again if I don't.

I've created a deck building game that's not really a deck building game. It's more of a... deck engine? In tradition deck builders, your deck grows larger. In mine (and I'm sure some others out there) you use the cards in your starter deck to acquire more cards, which you then get out into the field of battle as rapidly as possible. Meaning you start with 12 cards and your deck rarely grows larger than 15 or 16.

I've also made a card game that isn't a card game. You assassinate each other with cute little ninjas.

And now I'm working on a card game that is a card game - a trick taking, bidding game for ages 10+ that takes place in Fairyland and is very light. Think of Zombie Dice level light, and add about 5-10 minutes of game play over an average Zombie Dice game.

I spent all of my freetime for a period of several months on a game where you build fighting robots from different parts, then fight them against other player's robots in an arena. I seemed like a pretty fun and original idea, then saw this and it took the wind right out of my sails...

I recently started putting together a game that I've been toying around with for the last few years.

Tonight, believe it or not, is my first play test. I'm excited to see if my system works.

If anyone is interested there is a GREAT site out there called thegamecrafter.com that will print your game with custom artwork for a nominal fee. You provide everything and they provide a game to you. Helps if you only want a small single print to play around with.

Just to add something to the discussion, here's a recent creation of mine that I just kind of threw together in my head. There's no theme or anything right now, so its pretty abstract, but I thought it had a nice mix of betting, probability assessment, and social engineering. What do people think? Any obvious holes or oversights before I give this a try?

Components

Deck of 52 standard playing cards

One "player token" for each player

One "First Player" token

Pile of ~20 "Spite" tokens

Setup

In one of the card suits, 2 -> Ace are placed in a row face up in the middle

The rest of the cards are shuffled and placed into a deck

A pile of "spite tokens" is placed in the middle

A player is chosen to go first randomly, and is given the first player token

Gameplay:

Starting with the player with the "first player" token, players take turns placing their token onto one of the 13 cards in the row.

Play proceeds clockwise until each player has placed a token.

During a players turn, after placing their own token, that player may take a spite token to move any other players token up or down one card

A player may only take one spite token a turn

If a players token is being moved by a spite and it moves onto a card occupied by another players token, it continues to move until it lands on a non-occupied card.

Once the last player has placed thier token, the top 5 cards of the deck are turned over, one by one. A player gains a turned over card if:

Their player token is on a card equal to or greater in value than the turned over card AND

No other player has a token on a card of lesser value that is also greater than or equal to the turned over card

If no player qualifies for taking the card, the card is put into a discard pile

Once each card has been resolved, each player takes back their player token, and the first player token is passed to the left.

If the deck is ever empty, the discard pile is shuffled to make a new deck.

Play continues in this way until either:

Any player is able to reveal a hand of one of each card value or

The deck and discard pile are both empty.

If a player reveals a hand of one of each card value, they win.

If the game ends on an empty deck and discard pile, players add up the total value of cards in their hand (J=11, Q=12, K=13, A=14). This is your total points, and the player with the most points wins.

A players score is reduced by n(n+1)/2 (1+2+3..+n) points at the end of the game, where n = the # of spite tokens they have.